Allie
by Gilmore-007
Summary: Cameron's a liar. Derek knows that she's the farthest thing from the once living, breathing human being that he had held in his arms; the one girl that he came closest to loving. That Terminator will never be Allison Young. Slightly AU. Derek/Allison.
1. Week One

**A/N: M'kay, this is my take on the whole "Allison from Palmdale" deal. I am perfectly aware that Derek had some form of romantic engagement in the last episode with this Jessie character, but for the sake of the fic, pretending that she comes into play much before or way after this fiction takes place would be great :D Also, this deal is in absolutely no way affiliated with my Derek/Cam story, and if you're following that spool at all and are completely confused about my sparratic updating, consulting my profile will hopefully give you any answers that you're seeking.**

**Summary: Cameron's a liar. Derek knows that she's the farthest possible thing from the once living, breathing human being that he had held in his arms; the one girl that he came closest to loving. That Terminator will never be Allison Young. Slightly AU. Derek/Allison. Futurefic.**

**Disclaimer: I am the proud owner of two hundred dollars in savings bonds and the nail polish I bought last week. That's it.**

**And we're off! **

The life expectancy of a Runner is roughly five weeks from the date of inauguration

"Brocik," Derek Reese says gruffly, consulting the sheet held between his grimy, calloused fingers. The skinny young man with the stocking cap gives him a curt nod, nervously cracking his knuckles. Derek moves on to the next volunteer, deciding Brocik to be adequate for the job.

Runners hit each of the seven bases in the area -- one for every day in a week, eventually circling back and relaying information from the main base to the six minor branches seeing as how electronics absolutely cannot be trusted to get the job done without the threat of Skynet infiltration. They have to be quick, smart, loyal and willing to sacrifce their lives for the rest of the Resistance.

"Fennery." The kid can't be older than fifteen years, yet to experience his first real shave or a kiss on the cheek from the blonde girl next door. Derek swallows as he nods, watching the boy's pale eyes sweep over the form of his hero. Fennery will never know those things, either.

From now on, Reese will see this quartet of soldiers on a handful of times. Some only last one round, some four more. He has yet to see a Runner last six weeks. They go through them quickly and righteous volunteers are difficult to find. However, Connor seems to pick them like rocks in beach sand out of a flour sifter.

"Robue," he addresses the stocky man in front of him. He has a missing front tooth and his stare is looking up over Derek's shoulder instead of in the face. Moving on to the last person, he stops the urge to pommel John surges through his veins.

He hasn't really talked to her much. Damn, for what reason would he have to kibitz with this little waif of a girl? He's seen her standing in line for dinner, sitting on her square of matted carpeting, checking and cleaning the guns, but never would he ever take her for the sort to sacrifice her life for a bunch of rats living underground and fighting a losing war. Why does John have to send out this teenage girl who won't have a snowball's chance in hell?

"Young," he says quietly. Allison's brown eyes are light and seem to be smiling, her mouth quirking up at the corners in a sort of quirky grin. Her teeth are white, but her skin has grease stains and scratches from the bunker walls. She's the only one of the four that seems to be genuinely thrilled to be there. Surprisingly, she reaches forward and holds out her hand. With a strong grip and looks to kill, she says, "Reese."

**--Week One --**

"You went _back_ for him?" Derek hisses between clenched teeth, shoving through the crowd congregating at the entrance in order to get to a bleeding Brocik, supported by both Allison and the man with the missing tooth. The kid smells like warm garbage and the whites of his eyes are showing because they're rolled up into his skull; small red lines at the bottom are showing vividly.

"Of course I did," Allison says sternly, hefting the bloody mass on top of her shoulder. Commanding Robue to get out of the way, Derek takes the other arm to help her. "I wasn't going to leave him there."

"Why not?" Grumbling and swearing, they make their way down the poorly lit tunnel, hoping to get to the medical supplies in time. He glances over to see a smear of blood across her forehead. Chances are it's not hers.

She tightens her grip around Brocik. "He was the fastest we had, but he hid the wound." As she pauses to catch her breath and heave him onto a dirty cot in the corner of the room, Derek takes a quick assessment of her. As far as he can tell, she's not hurt herself. "It got infected, he slowed down, he caught shrapnel in the chest," she says simply, ripping the boy's torn jacket off his thin body.

"A double whammy."

"Yup," she says.

He took specific notice of the fact hat she didn't answer his question. While she opens the toolbox full of medical supplies, Derek reaches forward and tears open Brocik's shirt, not taking the time or energy pull it over his head properly. "Oh, shit." On his left side, a nasty purple gash filled with some sort of yellow liquid oozing out of it lies in the midst of fresh pinprick red dots that were most likely caused by a flying spray of metal. "Are you easily grossed out?"

Handing him a needle and thread to hold, she looks at him out of the corner of her eye. "Are you?" Preferring not to answer this particular question, Derek watches as Allison goes to work, scrubbing out the wound with pure alcohol and a grubby cloth, looking to get out all the clotted blood and pus before sewing it all up. He puts his fist to his mouth, feeling his stomach turn, and the girl bites her bottom lip as fresh blood soaks the cot underneath Brocik. She tosses the used cloth back into the box and takes the needle from Derek, starting at the top of reddish-purple slash and makes her way down, taking her time to do the stitches properly.

After half an hour, the kid's passed out, his heart rate so slow that it concerns the older man. "What're the chances of him making it out of this?"

"Slim," she says, dousing her hands in alcohol and drying them off on the pants of her fatigues. "Well, actually, you know better than I, so I have no right to say."

"I didn't just stitch him up."

Allison shakes her head. "But I had no idea what I was doing." He can see that she tries to form a small smile, but it doesn't necessarily turn out right. "Only two days ago I first saw it done."

It's late, seeing as how the Runners arrived when it was dark, like always, and most had retired to the cement floor on the other side of the bunker for a night of poor attempts at sleeping. However, the occasional person passes by with an AK-47 strapped to their backs. They tend to give Brocik a pitiful look and salute Derek with an awkward half wave. Leaning against the crumbling form wall, the uncle of General John Conner turns his head slightly to the side and looks at Allison, whose petite frame and stature have lately and amazingly shocked him. Upon first glance, she's just a girl who should ordinarily be worrying about nail polish or about whether to take Bob or Joe to Homecoming. But this war, those goddamn machines...

"You should try to catch some sleep," he suggests, out of the blue.

She makes a sigh, jerking her thumb towards her 'patient.' "I have to keep an eye on him."

"I've got that covered. I can babysit." He shrugs.

"You almost puked when you saw that gash of his," Allison says. When he squares his jaw to glare at her, she smiles – a real one this time. "I won't be able to sleep, anyways."

"So," Derek prompts, "why'd you go back for him?"

"Because."

He quirks a brow. "Because why?"

Taking a deep breath, she looks down at her hands. "Have you ever heard of the 'Might is Right' philosophy?"

"King Arthur."

"Call it weak," she says, her chocolate eyes glimmering in the faulty lighting. "Call it stupid, call it brave. There was no way I could just leave him behind like that." She'd directly violated one of the rules. No matter who or what it is, you never go back to save someone who's down. Ever.

There are several moments of silence and the tension hangs so thick in the air, a gymnast could do some abysmal trick on it. "Have you--?" Derek starts, but is interrupted.

"And I'm not sorry."

_--ever had a wrong first impression of someone?_

**A/N: Part one of five.**

.


	2. Week Two

**A/N: Welcome to part two of five. Yay! So, I've fixed a few typos and minor errors in the last chapter in case it was bugging a few of you. I know it does me, so I thought I'd clear that all up.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own nor am I affiliated with Terminator in any way, shape or form... That I know of...**

**And we're off!**

**-- Week Two -- **

Derek hates the way the bracelets sit on their wrists. Made purely of scrap metal burnt down or found around the bunker, they're held tightly around the wearer's arm as to where only an extremely large amount of force could ever pry them off.

Drowned in the mud, the water seeps through the thin fabric covering his body and Derek feels the cheap aluminum digging into the rough skin on his fingers. He hisses through clenched teeth, blood seeping down his wrist and landing on the dead body underneath him.

"Jesus Christ..." he can hear Allison mutter under her breath, barely audible over the sound of the rain pounding it's way down from the sky, pinging and panging on every piece of machinery with the name "Skynet" stamped across it.

"You didn't have to come, so shut up."

"It was my fault," she says, hunkering down next to him and resting her hand gently on the small of his back. He's lying prone on the ground, both of his arms reaching down into a giant hole they'd just made in the earth.

"If you're gonna help, then help," he snaps at her, "...instead of acting like you want something."

The warm feeling on his back instantly disappears and it's replaced by a cruel suggestion. "Break his hand."

"What?"

She swears some more. "You think we're just given time here, Derek? You're pansying the hell around and we need that damn bracelet; we're screwed if they find it."

He rises up to his knees, his whole front slathered in dirt. "You do it then," he spits at her, pointing cruelly towards Brocik who's laid in his grave. "If you think _you're_ just so fuck—"

"Fine," interrupts stiffly.

The next thing he knows, she lying down next to the grave, a sickening crunch reverberates through the air and the metal check-in bracelet is thrown at his feet.

---

He's doesn't understand why they even bothered burying him. Normally, they just throw the dead ones in the same burner that melts down the scraps after everything is gotten rid of and toss the ashes outside, mumbling a few words of goodbye. They don't make a big ceremony out of it, John does the tossing, thanks them for their service, and it's over and done real quickly. However, when Allison got back from her second round a few hours ago, the discovery of Joseph Brocik's death didn't go so smoothly. Continually, she blamed herself for his demise, saying how she could have done something or stayed to watch him. Derek cynically enlightened her to the fact that it would have been much easier to just leave him behind. He got a dirty look from that one.

Connor only let her bury him outside the bunker if Derek was in attendance and if she went between certain hours of the very early morning where Skynet patrol would be at its lowest possible point

So that's what they did.

Right now, Derek and Allison are sitting across from each other on opposite sides of the skinny, dimly lit hall that connects the main entrance of the bunker to the rest of the thing. For reasons that even he doesn't understand, Derek is never far away from the door. Possibly it's because he doesn't want to get trapped at the far end by the machines like a lone, empty square at the bottom of a Tetris game.

"I've known you for two days," he starts, fingering the encoding strap inside the check-in bracelet. He doesn't count the week that she was running around outside, dodging hellish entities to deliver messages scrawled down on something or other with charcoal.

"No. You've known me since the bombs fell," she says flatly. "You just never bothered to say anything or recognize my existence."

He narrows his brows. "Hypocrisy is not your strong point."

"Yeah, well."

"Anyways," he says, "in those two days...Hell, an _hour_ ago—"

"What would you have done?" He doesn't answer. "Just let them find it? I know that if that was me, I'd be just like Brocik."

She doesn't elaborate, so he probes farther. "What do you mean?"

"If they want my bracelet, they're gonna have to rip it off my dead body."

"You're a lunatic."

"I am not."

At this, Derek sits back, his ass starting to get sore from being planted on the hard cement floor. He stretches out his legs, crossing them at the ankle and looks over the top of his feet to see Allison staring the bottom of his boots. "It's your fault they're muddy."

He studies her for a while. Three minutes, four minutes; he has no idea how long. Every part of him knows that if all the dirt, blood and Christ knows what else is scrubbed away, she'd be gorgeous. Her petite frame, those big brown eyes and the way her mouth turns up at the left corner as if she's pondering over whether to smile or not would all collaborate to create something unlike no other.

Derek watches her line of sight travel away from his footwear; it crawls over his legs and up his chest to meet up with his own eyes.

"You remind me of my dad."

He blinks. "Oh?"

"M'hmm."

Lord, that wasn't exactly what he was going for. "You remember him?"

"I do," she says, her voice having a sort of odd wave to it. Apparently, that wasn't the greatest of all questions to ask. "I can't really put what he looked like; I was really young, but I remember how he...felt." Her tone is soft, but grainy at the edges like she doesn't quite want to say anything about the subject. "I don't remember much from then, but I always had this ...feeling about being safe around him. Y'know?" At this, she goes back to looking at the bottom of his boots. "Secure."

Mumbling, barely audible, he says, "Must've been nice."

"Dunno why, but I've yet to have this feeling since a week ago." Allison shrugs. "When I was running around out there with the machines and the guys, when I was worrying about Brocik...I'd think of you and I'd feel safe."

"When I think of you, I wonder how you're gonna shock the hell out of me next," Derek says.

She gives him one of those smiles. "Oh, I'm full of surprises." With a grumble and a groan, she rises up on her feet with stiff knees. "I got probably half an hour left."

Tilting his neck a funny angle, he looks out the hole blown into the side of the bunker that forms a convenient window sort of apparatus to see dawn shoving its way up through the haze on the horizon. "More like half a second."

As if on cue, Robue and the other two show up around the corner and Derek has to stand up to make room for them to get through the hall. Acknowledging them with a curt nod, he asks if they have enough guns, medical supplies and food to get them to the next bunker. Robue hands Allison her pack, confirming that they have such things in order.

A few others bother to get up at the early hour to see off the Runners, thoughts running through their heads -- all pertaining to if they'd ever see them again.

Strangely, Derek clenches Brocik's bracelet in his sweaty grasp, desperately not wanting to add another's to the collection.

Allison turns, bringing her hand to her forehead in a mock solute. "Reese," she says, her eyes aglow and with a lopsided grin.

"Allie."

**A/N: End of part two of five.**


	3. Week Three

**A/N: Part 3 of 5. Events in this chapter will tie into the concluding two. Gah, and I'm terribly sorry for not updating for the past...two weeks? God, that's terrible. Oh, and if any of you can find my line in here that's stolen from The Fray, I congratulate you. :)**

**Disclaimer: Hilarity.**

**--Week Three--**

When Derek was about nine or ten years old, he'd have oatmeal for breakfast every single day before hoofing it out to the bus stop. During that time, he got very good at perfecting the art of how to turn plain, gray mush into a sugary, early morning snack that'd happily devoured by children of all ages. He'd top it all off with maple syrup, half a box of Domino and those little marshmallow things that nobody ever seems to be rid of, and it'd taste wonderful. However, living in a dirty tunnel dozens of feet below the earth without a confectioner in sight made the prospect of oatmeal very bleak. Hell, it seems as if the only things that John can get his hands on are made of starch or come out of a tin can.

Derek's not exactly complaining, though. He's heard stories of other bunkers that are putting their Donner Party Survival Guide to good use. Happily stuffing a globful of sticky oatmeal into his mouth, he feels it cementing itself to his insides. Over the top of his bowl, he can see Allison raising a brow at him.

"What?" he asks, his spoon midway to its destination. Lately, he's been one of the few to stay with the Runners from when they arrive in the middle of the night to when the leave just before dawn. Over the last couple of runs, they've all congregated together to sit, eat and talk about whatever made the sun shine. Robue, sitting to Derek's left, chuckles. "Something funny?" he says, turning.

"Nope," Allison says, her eyes grinning in a mischievous fashion. She goes back to her bowl and bites her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

He doesn't rightly know if they're honestly amused by the something that he's completely opaque of, or they're trying to mask the deep fear of Fennery puling in and out of his unconsciousness like two people on a broken seesaw. They arrived not an hour ago, barely in the door when the man's eyes rolled up in his skull, and he fainted. Later, Derek had to good reason to believe that it was from blood loss; Fennery's hand was cut off three days ago in the previous bunker due to infection. Clearly, the wound had not clotted properly and he was just bleeding freely, staining all of his clothes a charming shade of vermillion.

Eying the barely breathing human being deep in sleep from his corner, Derek clears his throat. "When's the last time he ate?"

"Fennery?" Robue asks, his forehead molded in a confused line.

Allison gives him a look. "A couple of hours ago."

"He puke it up?" Derek inquires.

"Yup."

"Not surprising."

"Nope."

Robue's face suddenly drains of all color. "I'm not so hungry anymore." He pushes his bowl away.

Before Derek can even get at it, Allison takes Robue's oatmeal portion, stares at it for a bit and heads over to Fennery. Derek watches her as she sits with her legs crossed on the cement floor and leans forward, pulling off the boy's stocking cap. Not too long ago they hooked up a portable construction lamp to a battery-run generator, and it's now giving the older man's eyes enough light to see the scene unfolding before him.

After a minute, he knows something is wrong. It happened quickly; a sort of ugly fog seeping out from underneath a sewer grate, slowly catching Derek's attention, but not yet the other two's. Shaking his head, he repeats to himself that it's not fair, that this is the hell that they'd volunteered themselves into – that fucked up suicide pact.

_Two down, two to go._

Looking over at Robue, Derek notices how his face is so white, that it's almost like Saran Wrap. "Shit...shit, Reese." His voice is sort of croaky and his eyes go glassy and shine like they ran out of tears years ago. Now he knows. "Should we...should we..." Robue breaks off into a whisper, "...tell her?"

"No," he says sternly, staring ahead. He hasn't seen a hint of breathing from Fennery for the past few minutes. "Allie can figure it out." At that moment, he wonders if she can hear him, but he knows that she can't.

The kid's face is chalky and the cold sweat that was seeping down from his temple had left behind a pale trail through the caked on dirt. Threadbare clothes lay on his still warm frame, hanging loosely over his ragged form, the gray stocking hat no longer complimentary with his attire for it's held tightly in Allison's hand. Gradually, Derek watches as she realizes what had happened since they last checked to see that he was breathing not ten minutes ago. "Hey," she whispers softly, running her other hand through his matted, black locks, "Fence." That's her nickname for him. Fence. Derek doesn't know why, but he's aware that it doesn't concern him. "I got something for you."

"All-" Derek starts, rising up from the ground and stepping towards her.

She whips around, her expression furious. "I know," she lashes out. "I fucking _know._ Just...just...w-wait."

Kneeling down next to her, he goes to place a hand on her shoulder but she suddenly stands up, wiping her hands off on her pants as if she was trying to get rid of something. "Look, he didn't really have a chance, Allie. The kid's hand was _cut off_, for Chrissakes."

"And?"

"And...that's it."

"No," she says. She's so angry that her words are shaking and falling together. "He...I...it wasn't cut off in the back woods, we did it—"

"You?" Derek asks, crossing his arms. "You who?"

"Oh, you know _who_, Reese. Don't be dumbass."

"'We' as in 'Robue and I'?"

Allison runs her hands through her hair in frustration. "Yes! Yes, Robue and I!"

He now takes note of the fact that Robue is no longer in the room. "Oh."

"Yeah," she spits back at him. "Oh." She failed Brocik, she failed Fennery. Both of those kids' deaths are partially her fault and she knows it. "I just....I don't know what—" Breaking off in mid-sentence, she shakes her head. "We need to get off his bracelet before he goes rigor."

"Wait," Derek says, reaching out his hand to grab her around the wrist.

She stops. "I'm not breaking this one, too."

"We'll burn him, not bury him. It'll be fine."

Allison lets out a breath that's some odd mix between a sigh and a growl. "It's just..."

He waits a while but doesn't get a response. Leading her to a spare, blood-stained, army cot sitting next to the dead kid, he wonders what exactly she's been through over the past three weeks. Derek's just not cut out to be a Runner. Mostly, it's because he can't run like a rat through a maze without blowing his brains out, but also because it's way too much stress on him. He can't take it. Stretching out his legs with her beside him, he simply relaxes and lets everything sort of settle over him; it's a weird outlet he uses to relieve this wonderful stress. Once it overcomes you, it can't get much worse, so you accept it.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he looks at her -- like really looks at her, for the first time, instead of checking her out. Allison is leaning forward, her elbows resting on the worn knees of her pants, her chin lying on knitted fingers. Her expression is painfully difficult to read because she's staring down at the toes her boots, her eyes downcast and hidden form immediate view. Tied up in a loose, haphazard ponytail, her hair has a golden glow emanating from the depths of its brown locks that gives her a sobering sort of feature, and a more than a few loose strands sweep across her forehead, making her thoughts even harder to understand. Apparently, she chews on her bottom lip when she doesn't know what to do or can't take the blur of the society crumbling around her, and Derek kind of likes that. It annoys him more than anything, but it suits her just perfectly.

She so tense, though, that it's scary. He can see the muscles in her hands when she runs them through her hair and then cracks her knuckles, the sound reverberating through the empty, concrete hall. Allison then, finally, leans back.

"Hey," Derek says.

"What?"

"Do you...uh, wanna talk about it?"

"No," she says sternly, her eyes hard.

He crosses his arms. "You just can't sit like that. It's not good for you. You'll take a screwdriver to us all tomorrow." It was a poor attempt at a joke, yet she didn't acknowledge it.

After a stint of silence, she says, "It was terrible."

"Fennery?"

She just nods.

"The whole hand thing...?"

More nodding.

"I'm sorry."

"I didn't know what to do," she whispers, now resorting to look over his shoulder instead of back at him.

"Look at me," Derek says roughly, which was not his intention. "Allie, please—"

"Why do you call me that?"

Oh, God. "Call you what?"

"Allie."

"Because that's your name."

"The last person to call me that was...my dad," she finishes, her face now a whole half shade brighter. Barely.

"Do you purposely wander off topic?"

"I told you that I don't want to talk about it," Allison says darkly, glaring at him from the corner of her peripheral vision.

Now, this is starting to get aggravating. "Why?" he asks, leaning towards her. "Why am I not allowed knowing _why_ I have to tell John that another Runner is dead? Huh?"

"I already told you that his hand was cut off."

"By you."

"Yes, _by me_," Allison says, finishing their conversation. She pushes herself off the cot and leaves Derek behind to sit there.

For a few seconds, he watches her walk off; Allison's perfect figure, the way her jaw is set in her definitive answer and the ignorant way that her shoulders are squared under a ratty jacket that's at least two sizes too big. He resists the urge to yell out, to tell her that she's just ignoring Fennery's dead body and to at least show a little bit of respect. Then it occurs to him – Fennery's dead.

"Wait!" His voice is hoarse as he says this.

She doesn't.

"Allie!"

She does. Immediately after he starts towards her, he can see that something's wrong. With arms wrapped around her body, she just stands there and keeps her eyes focused ahead. Once Derek approaches her, she glances up at him only to angrily brush a lone tear off her cheek with the heel of her hand.

When he reaches his arms out for her to fall into like a sort of fifties movie star, she steps back and turn right around, brushing him off. "Hey..."

"No," she chokes out, shoving him away and turning her body as she attempts to wipe away any hints of crying with the back of her sleeve.

"Allie, just...c'mon--"

"Fuck off, Reese." It's ridiculous trying to get what she's saying because her words are all slurred together, partially because he sleeve's in the way, yet partially because she's holding everything in and that doesn't normally have healthy side effects within iteself.

He shakes his head and steps back, stuffing his hands inside the pockets of his fatigues. "Fine," he says.

If anything, that's the right thing to do because he's not going to chase after her like a lawyer for an ambulance and she knows it. Goddamn, he's had enough of her attitude. Every time he figures that she might be a little bit into him, she makes some comment that always refers to him reminding her of her father. He's given her opportunities to tell her what's eating at her and she just rejects him. So, he's going to let her be. If Allison wants to go in a corner and stew by herself, then so be it. More power to her.

He goes left and she stays right between the lines of fear and blame.

_Fine._

---

Derek doesn't get up to see Robue and Allison off. He can't bring himself rise from the dirty concrete floor where he was trying to sleep in order to say a possible last good-bye a girl he's falling for. Staring up at what he supposes is a ceiling, he strongly decides on staying just where he is.

A few others from the Resistance give him a look, because they know that he's the one in charge of making sure that they're gone at the right time and heading to the right place with the right messages. Yet, he stays there in his bitter ignorance. He knows that it's mean and rude, and that he's being a child, but he wants her to realize how much it sucks to be ignored when that's not really what's wanted at that exact moment.

Some really weird part of him wishes for her to come back to him, to apologize for what she un-knowingly did. Derek's perfectly aware of the fact that he's the one that needs to step in and do that, however.

He takes a deep breath before pushing himself up from the ground and standing up with cricks in his knees. Suddenly, he has the urge to find her. He has to.

---

At the door of the bunker, Derek sees Robue sitting on the ground with his back against the blast door, a ghost of a smile on his face. "Yo," he calls out. "Allie!"

"She here still?" Derek asks, feeling the blood finally circulate back into his fingers from his uncomfortable sleeping position.

"Yeah, she's—"

From around the corner, he sees her for the briefest of all seconds before she collides into him, her arms wrapping themselves around his waist. He couldn't remember who good it felt to have another human being to embrace and hold for all they're worth, but he does now. His own arms hold her tightly and with a heavy, secure feeling.

Allison stands up on tiptoe, leans on his chest and mumbles into his jacket: "I'm sorry..." When she takes a slow step back from him, he takes great note of the fact that her eyes are red-rimmed and that her pallor is ghastly. It doesn't take a lot to figure out that she got no sleep the night before. But somehow, someway, she has a smile on her face.

"I don't care if you're sorry," he says, reaching for the gun rack on the wall. He loads and checks a shotgun and hands it to her. "Just come back."

"You know that I—"

"Come back," he repeats. "Please." He doesn't know what's gotten into him, but he does know that everything's not just going to end like this. His voice doesn't sound like him; it sounds desperate.

Leaving without a response or even a slight glance at him, Allison heads out of the door and in to the inky blackness, Robue in tow.


	4. Week Four

**A/N: Yay! First off, I'd like to thank anyone who's taken the time to read and review, it's greatly appreciated. :) Second, I'm compensating for the long update last time by aiming to complete this story by Monday. Whoo-hoo for me. Also, I have absolutely no idea how old Derek is or if my guesstimating is even close. Ooh, and this one is mostly conversation driven, except for the...end.**

**Disclaimer: I am the owner of nothing.**

**--Week Four--**

"You're a dumbass," Derek mutters as he threads a needle, holding it close to his face so he can see the eye.

"Sorry, I'll just get lasered across the stomach next time."

Derek grins. "We wouldn't want that, now would we?"

"No," she says, laughing into her elbow.

Allison Young's shirt is hiked somewhere up around her shoulders and she's lying face down on an army cot. An ugly laser burn stretches from her right shoulder to just above her bra strap. It's mostly a raw red mess, save for the part in the middle where it's bleeding something fierce. Once Derek finishes threading the needle, he reaches for a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. "This is gonna hurt," he says.

"I'd be shocked if it doesn't."

He pours a good amount of the alcohol on her wound, and when he does this, Allison's muscles tense from the base of her neck down to where the his calloused fingers rest at the small of her back. Seeing this, he moves his hand to between her shoulder blades, pressing down lightly. "Relax," he mumbles, immediately feeling his fingers rise from the deep breath that she takes. Her skin is smooth and soft under his touch, a harsh contrast to the gouge. "You'll make it worse." His voice is throatier than it is normally, but he doesn't have much control of that.

"Just do it," she says between gritted teeth as she firmly grasps the side of the cot. Once the needle touches her flesh, her grip tightens and the whites of her knuckles show. "Quickly."

Derek goes to work, her blood soon coating everything. "You wanna," he starts, "tell me how you got this?"

She inhales sharply. "Not really."

"Robue'll tell me anyways," he says coyly.

"No, he won't."

"Oh?"

"Reese, why do you want to know?"

"I just -- do."

"Huh," she says, her hold lessening on the side of the army cot seeing as how the pain sort of numbs all and she's concentrating not nearly as much on it.

"I take it that it's not from Running," he assumes, watching the black thread pull out of her skin.

There's a pause. "How'd you know that?"

"I'm smart."

"I don't wanna tell you," she says quietly into the crook of her arm.

They're silent for a while as he continues at his job. When Derek's already put a few stitches into her back, he breaks the quiet atmosphere with a question. "Allie..." he says, not quite knowing what to expect for an answer. "How old are you?" He reaches down and wipes his hands off on a roll of gauze, the stickiness messing up his stitching.

She's grinning even though he can't see it. "How old are _you_?"

"Thirty-one."

"I," Allison says with a strange waver in her tone, "am fifteen years your junior."

Oh.

Oh, _shit_.

He clears his throat_._ "Wow."

---

She makes a sound of disbelief. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Mmm, it's something."

"You're not sixteen."

"Sure I am."

"No," Derek says firmly, "you're not."

"You think I'm a liar, Reese?" A sigh. "I swear."

He grumbles a profanity of disapproval, more of the fact that he's disgusted with himself than of fact that he's stupidly slow at playing Operation. Allison makes a sorry attempt at turning to look at him, but that doesn't go too well. "Stop moving," he growls, pulling at the thread extra tight for emphasis.

She winces. "Christ, what's your problem?"

With the medical scissors, he snips off the remaining thread and continues to the next stitch. "I feel like a goddamn pedophile, that's all."

"Are you serious?" she asks, actually fighting off a laugh.

"Yes."

There's a momentary pause. "I've never heard that one before."

He narrows his brows, his mind telling him because it's from the poor lighting, but he changes the subject. "You gonna tell me how you got this, or not?"

"I'm not saying anything."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to," she says for what feels like the hundredth time.

"At first I was curious, and now you're dragging me along. It's your fault." He smirks, now able to tell that she's starting to get irritated.

Derek only has one stitch left to finish, but he's stretching it out because he knows that if he gets up and says that it's all done, she'll never tell him, therefore defeating the purpose. He decides, though, that if she still doesn't want to enlighten him to how she got herself lasered across the back, he'll just let it go.

"You know what...?" she asks slowly, sitting up because she's not entirely dim-witted. He's done. Allison's arms are bent at a funny angle as she tries to pull down her shirt, but her eyes flick up to Derek's. "Can you--?" Without thinking about it, he reaches forward, hastily tugging her tee over the stitched mess, ignoring the hot feel of her flushed skin against his rough palms. "Thanks," she mumbles.

"Yup."

She bites her bottom lip, her dark eyes no longer looking at him, but rather the dirty cement floor. "I made a mistake."

He lets out a deep breath. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah." She's wringing her hands and cracking her knuckles, her face pale. "At the time it was a...uh, good idea, actually."

Derek can hear his heart pounding in his ears. It kind of hurts. "Does this have anything to do with the burn?"

"It has everything to do with it," she says coldly, her jaw squared.

Not sure what to do, he moves his hand to her knee, laying it gently on the starchy fabric. Allison pulls back, abruptly standing up from the cot. Derek stands with her, the bones in his legs creaking. "Allie, what--?"

"I..." her voice is really scratchy, her eyes glinting, "...really _fucked_ up."

He wants to yell at her and just grab her by the shoulders to shake the answer out of her. She's driving him crazy. The blood is racing through his veins, and he can feel his pulse throbbing in his neck. The reason why he's so tangled up escapes him; all he's aware of is this slip of a girl gradually steering him towards insanity. He walks around her, reads the expression on her face and brazenly reaches forward, resting his hands on the curves of her hips. Watching her swallow and her eyes cloud over in anger, he asks roughly: "_What did you do_?"

"I slept with Robue," she growls, taking Derek's hands off her.

---

He chases her down the tunnel, thanking God that generally everyone's asleep.

At first, Derek stood there for a while as she walked away, letting the information sink right into his brain and rot everything out. It caught him by surprise, but it certainly didn't shock him. He wanted so badly to go up to Jackson Robue and beat the shit out of him, to punch him over and over again until his gut didn't hurt anymore. Christ, here's this teenage girl wrapping everybody around her pinky finger and she doesn't even know it. But he just stood there.

That is, of course, until he realized that she was already in the other room and he couldn't see her anymore, and he started running.

"Allie!" he yells, finally catching up with her at the end.

She keeps walking, her hands shoved in her pockets. "There was a raid," she says quietly, more of a mumble than anything else, "and I didn't have my shirt on. If I did, I still would've still gotten shot, but not nearly as bad."

He rubs his forehead, keeping up with her pace. "I guess I shouldn't have asked, huh?"

"No," she replies darkly, "you shouldn't have."

"I'm sorry."

Allison shrugs, stopping so she can look at him properly. "I just wasn't thinking. It was a moment thing...not your fault."

"But you're a -- k--," he manages to get out, disbelieving.

"I am not."

Derek scratches his arm. "Were you at least...uh--?"

"He pulled out," she mutters and starts walking again like it's none of his business; which it's not.

_Enough of that_, he decides, not even bothering to wonder why he went of on such a tangent.

Shaking his head, he just lets her go to figure out what she wants.

---

With the others, Derek's on the ground, yet unlike the others, he's thinking about how he's falling for a girl.

Just a girl; she's nobody special.

He doesn't know what it is about her or how she does it, but it's starting to get a little ludicrous. Already, Allison has gotten under his skin by screwing another guy and trying to keep it from him. However, that's not the biggest thing making his reason twist, it's the fact she, essentially, doesn't want him. Sure, she likes the fact that he makes her feel secure and what-not, but Derek doesn't want to be the father figure. He hasn't gone out in the pouring rain to bury a dead kid, seen her off every week and stitched up her shoulder just for hell of it. Never does he go around doing stuff like that for people he's known for barely a month.

Lucid to the fact that he's being ridiculous, that he should do her and get it over with, to not even bother with the rest of it. She's a Runner. Roughly, she's only got a week left, so what's the point?

_Just fuck her and fuck the rest._

Mulling this over, Derek rests his hands underneath his head and looks up at the rafters holding up the dirt ceiling in his habitual way. He's a cast away after-thought: That's what gets him.

In the bunker, it's darker than a witch's heart and he wouldn't be able to see if he was paid to do it, so when he feels a hand touching his bare arm, he jumps.

"It's me," says a familiar voice. "Allie." He can vaguely see her outline, but he can definitely feel her. The heat's coming off her body like she's a goddamn radiator.

"Jesus," he mutters. "Couldn't even hear you."

"That's my job," whispers, keeping her voice down. "…hence my staying alive for this long."

"Ah. So, what do you want?" he asks brusquely, her hand still on his arm.

"Frankly?" she asks, more to herself than to him. "Lots of things."

"Name it."

"To apologize." Allison takes away her arm and instead puts it on her lap when she leans against the cement wall behind them.

He almost laughs, but then realizes that he's in a room full of sleeping Resistance fighters that'd be none too thrilled to be awoken by their midnight jibber-jabbering. "For what?"

"Having sex with Robue."

Derek's eyes widen, surprised that she just blurted that out with all these people around. "You're...forgiven?"

"...Thank-you," she says quietly.

"You know, I don't really care about who you sleep with or why you do it. You can do whatever you want."

He can tell she's thinking about this. "That didn't aggravate you?"

A pause. "No," he says a little too quickly as he lies straight through his teeth. They then succumb to a silence, neither of which wanting to say much of anything.

---

Her steady breathing almost lulls him into a light sleep before she speaks, jarring him awake with her comment. "I have to go in a few hours."

Derek opens his eyes, the room still completely dark. "One thing...?" he mumbles, his voice a croak.

"Mmm?"

"Don't go," he blurts, the words falling right out of his mouth.

Removing his hands from behind his head, he sits up so he's supported by the wall beside her. He can almost hear the cogs turning in her brain and the quiet atmosphere makes him wonder if she even heard him. To falsify this thought, he reaches out his hand towards her, closing the two inches that separate them.

Allison's hand is small in his, her fingers itch his skin as she trails up to his wrist, tracing the bones that connect his hand to the rest of his body. Her index finger goes over the faded tattoo on his forearm and grazes along the scar the winds itself around his elbow. Derek hears her breath catch when the muscles in his bicep involuntarily flex as she lifts up the sleeve of his t-shirt.

"Make me want to stay," she whispers, her eyes shining in the dark.

His thumbs hook themselves in the belt loops of her pants, his palms secure on her hips as she lifts her up and settles her on his lap so she's straddling him, her knees digging into the concrete behind them. He can't see her all too good, but he can certainly feel her hands in fingers wander at the base of his neck and tangle themselves in his thick, brown hair. She pulls until it hurts so bad that silver sparks are dancing behind his eyes, and he leans forward, his lips pressing harshly against hers until she lets go, bracing herself against the wall with the heel of her hand.

She pushes back, though, fighting to gain control until she breaks, her mouth eventually giving away to Derek's force. Allison's lips part with a short, feminine gasp of shock, his tongue sliding between her teeth to meet with hers in a quick, practiced motion. The kiss is more than a word, but rather a feeling that's been shoved aside out of ignorance and disbelief. He feels his mind turn in its grave, her mouth hot as she presses up against him, a bold move that he acknowledges by bending his leg off the ground and sliding her closer to him, the inside of her thigh meeting with his heavy, metal belt buckle. Biting back a groan when they break apart with a suction noise, she arches slightly back into his hand when his mouth touches her collarbone.

"Allie..." He mumbles her name when she comes back to meet his lips again, this time more softly and in control, as if she knows exactly what she's doing. Derek lets her, the latent and genuine want in her kiss making him regret that he hadn't done something sooner. "We're gonna...they'll hear us—"

"Good," she breathes, her chest rising and falling in time to his. "Let them."

He leans back, his fingers playing with the hem of her shirt. "You wanna stay now?"

"You know I'm going to go," Allison says into his neck, conforming into the man's welcoming embrace. "I can't stay no matter--."

"Is that an invitation?"

"No," she whispers. "It's a subpoena."

"How long...?" he asks, taking that hem that's in his hand and softly slides it up her toned body, his knuckles brushing over her warm, smooth stomach and up her rib cage. Derek's careful with the stitches and helps her gently pull the garment over her head. They don't know, nor do they see where it lands as she reaches for his own tee, getting rid of it as quickly as possible. Question shoved aside, he runs his finger underneath the strap of her black bra, the satin fabric foreign against the callused tips. "You're beautiful," he mummers, the first dull light from the rising sun gracing her skin and showing off the slight highlights in her hair.

He can now see her a bit better; the curve of her breasts and the way she's biting her bottom lip as her hands run over the rough leather of Derek's belt. His gut clenches as he sees and feels this, the seeming innocence and the irony of it all.

As soon as he takes her hands away and puts them in his own, he knows that it's time for her to go off to Hell, to dodge the bombs and the bullets for the last time. Never before in his life has he ever seen a Runner last more than five weeks, rarely five at that. Roube and Allison Young are the rare exceptions. He looks up to see that her eyes are swollen in the rising sun and he knows that she's got to go. Even so, they're cutting it extremely close with time. Normally, they'd leave before the sun even thought about coming up.

---

Derek helps Allison lift the heavy pack onto her shoulders, the desire to tell her she'd better come back's now even stronger in his mind, but he doesn't have to say it because they both know.

In some strange, brotherly act, he reaches forward, clasping Roube's hand in his own. "Be safe," he says gruffly, letting go with a curt nod. The other man blinks before nodding in return.

Standing with the handle of the door in his firm grasp, Derek watches Robue leave, Allison tagging along behind. She holds his green-eyed gaze steady, her petite frame holding so much feeling with one look. However, her stance is square, her jaw solid.

"Allie," he says.

"Reese," she returns. For the first time since he met her, he hears her voice crack.

**A/N: One left.**


	5. Week Five

**A/N: Ah, last chapter. Yes, this is not Monday. Ironically, I was watching Terminator... Lots of f-bombs in here, too. :P**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**-- Week Five --**

Hands are pushing him down onto the kitchen island, and orders are being barked across the room for scissors, stitches and anti-septic as a man with a square head jams his whole fist inside of Derek's chest. The voices are muffled; the stranger's gloved fingers numbingly cold against the hot blood oozing onto Sarah Connor's counter, an accident that patient doesn't remember, never mind understand because everything is going foggy right before his eyes. He knows that he calls out several times in either pain or confusion, both of which rarely prick a stimulus within his brain, this extenuating situation being the exception. Barely able to register what's going around him, he hears the words "low heart rate" and "severe," the phrases meaning virtually nothing to him. All Derek Reese's mind now cares about is the fact that he made it to the past, that John's younger self is seemingly safe in the average suburbs of Los Angeles, his mother by his side. That's all that matters.

Before he completely goes under, he sees the serene, calm face of Allison Young in the corner of the room, being pushed back by a young man with shaggy hair. However, he passes out before rationality and past events scream that she's made of plastic, not the skin he'd touched with his own.

---

With his nerves on pins and needles, Derek waits at the bunker door, his mind already telling him that there's no way that they could come back; that they made it through that long. All week, he shoved pictures of Allison out of his head and repeated to himself to forget everything about her and that it's not worth it all. She's just a girl; just a girl with a death sentence hanging over her head like a thick, dense fog.

Sitting on an overturned bucket, he wipes his sweaty palms off on his worn fatigues, the dirt from the days before rubbing onto his pants. Derek lays his head back on the wall and squeezes his eyes shot to block out the confused rays of the rising sun that stumble through the bunker window as if they don't know what time of day it is. As the minutes pass and the light becomes stronger, he feels the willpower to stay awake slip right out of his body, for he knows that it's been a week.

Normally, they'd be back hours ago, before the sun shone in defiance of the rules.

_It's not fair_.

Since 2011, the sun hasn't been the same. Before, it was a beacon that symbolized happiness and new hope for the upcoming day, a compliment to the perfect summer weekend. It would hang bright in the sky, and nobody thought much of it until they grew to hate it. Now, the star looms like a fireball, threatening to rain down on everything through the dank, dirty smog that pollutes the sky from the machines that patrol night and day. It's barely seen and its rays are filtered through clouds of dense moisture and gray, oppressive splotches from above. Dark is the prime time to dodge the bullets, Skynet and the Terminators, a concept that Derek knew -- yet did not heed -- the morning he sent Allison Young and Jackson Robue off Running. Somewhere down in his stomach, he knows that it's his fault, for he does not like to think of himself low enough to deny it.

In what feels like a haze, an incomprehensible dream, Derek's attention is dragged in by a figure out in the distance and a little tick inside his brain tells him that it's Allie.

Allie?

Well, he'll be damned, she made it.

Fighting off a grin, he stumbles to his feet, an unbelieving and relieved smile adorning his tired and worn face. "Shit, girl," he says, laughing as she walks towards him, a certain air about her that makes him wonder why and how he ever doubted her in the first place.

She fits comfortably in his arms, her small body enveloped by scarred, tattooed arms that itch to protect her, keep her safe, and utterly refuse to let her just walk right back onto the battle field. Derek lets the scent of her sink into his skin, a sense he distinctly remembers, as he loosely winds a tendril of hair that fell out her ponytail around his finger.

"I missed you," she mumbles into the shoulder of his jacket, her embrace tight around his back.

He thinks about this for a moment. "You have no idea," he returns, his voice gruff. "Scared the piss outta me..."

Oddly, he hears a light knocking from the corner of his brain, but he shoves it aside, the moment not one that he'd easily ruin.

"I'm," Allison starts, her tone shaky, "sorry."

"Huh?"

"R-Reese, I'm so sorry..." she says, her voice muffled by both his body and the sudden sobs that are forcing their way out of her slight frame.

"Wha--? Allie, w--?" he asks, startled.

Slowly, he lets go of her and holds her at an arms length, looking at her closely. She's devoid of wounds, scars, and blood or bullet holes. She looks perfectly fine – beautiful, in fact, despite the fact that her eyes are swimming in tears and from the way that she holds up her hand in front of her mouth as if she's trying to keep something in.

Frustratingly, the knocking starts to turn into an annoying thumping from Christ knows where and it's starting to really aggravate him, that coupled with how Allison seems to be having a sort of break-down.

"Hey, hey," he says softly, cradling her chin in his hands as he runs his thumbs along her jaw bone. "Don't worry about it. We got it all under control. You're here, you're safe. There's nothing to get upset about."

She shakes her head in denial. "When you answer the...the d-door," she says, the sobs starting to make room for her words, "you need to forget everything."

Mystified, his eyebrows knit together. _What door? That sound is a door? _"I don't understand—"

"Listen to me, Derek," she says, her tone now forceful, her hands and fingers cold inside his hold. "Forget about me."

"No," he says, shocked and taken aback. "What in the hell are you talking about?"

The thumping has now turned into a banging; a horrible, terrible sound that's reverberating inside his eardrums making it hard to concentrate. "Reese!" screams a hoarse voice. "_Reese!"_

"Hold on a damn second!" he yells, furious.

"Answer the door," Allison says, her chocolate eyes boring right into his before they start to go a little misty and fade, their grip weakening. "And forget everything you know about me. Please, it's what..."

The banging, roaring noise is impossible to hear her over; the man's voice is starting to grate on his nerves. _"They got her! Those fucking sons-of-bitches are taking her apart--!"_ The voice is torn, distraught and terrified.

"Allie?" Derek asks, nothing at all making sense. However, she's taking a few steps back, the edges around her starting to become unclear and defocused, as if he's peering through a scratched window. "Allie, wait!" he chokes, his mind folding upon itself.

"You don't know me..." These are the last words he hears from her, the phrase desperate as it leaves.

She holds out her hand to him, her expression full of loss and despair, but his fingers slip right though her, like she's a dream that's fading away and he can't grasp it.

"_Allie!"_

---

Derek jerks awake, gasping for breath and instead quickly inhales a wad of spit in his mouth that chokes him up. He doubles over, his lungs burning as they decongest themselves and clear his airway, the muscles in his back aching from his terrible sleeping position against the wall. Any thought of the dream he'd just had is faded away, the one fact remaining that Allie was there and that she wanted something of him. With a creaking body, he slowly gets up off the bucket, for some flaming retard is throwing himself at the door and screaming so loud that his words are not easily deciphered.

"What?" Derek croaks, angered by this stupid person. He's waiting for someone and she's not here yet.

"Reese! _Open up!_ It's Robue!"

_Roube?_

If that ass made it, then Allison most certainly did.

Pulling back the iron bar, Derek slide the door on its rusty hinges, a device that's surely never keep a determined Terminator at bay.

A dirty man with blood caked on his face collapses at the entrance, his stench diffusing rapidly trough the small bunker room. He tries to push himself up weakly with his scabbed arms, but can't hold himself up and flumps to the ground in a cloud of dust. With a few quick glances, Derek closes the metal door swiftly behind him before roughly seizing the other man's collar in his grip and yanks him up, bringing his face right to other's, snot running down smaller's chin.

"_Where is she?"_ Derek roars. "What the _fuck_ did you do?"

"I-I dunno, I just know that they...t-Skynet got her...th-they—" Robue slobbers over his clothes, any and all respect for himself non-existent, crushed by the mistake that he'd made.

Shoving him down to the ground, Derek stumbles back to the wall and sinks down the ground, burying his head in his hands, his body and brain refusing to believe a single fact that reality's holding out in a platter for him.

A few hours later, he's still on the concrete floor, no longer able to register what's happening. Roube lies in front of him, his arms sprawled forward, his frame twisted from Derek's neglect.

Without feeling bad for anyone or anything, he ignores the metal entrance door that's ripped from its hinges in an ear-splitting crunch as it skitters across the room like a discarded rag doll.

In its place stands Allison Young, or what used to be her. Now there's a Terminator with fake blood molded around coltan bones with a gun in its hand. Still, Derek stares forward, his eyes vacant of feeling or care as he vaguely registers that a cold, hard barrel is pressed harshly against his temple.

Slowly, as if amused, the man brings himself to look up at the flawless creation standing above him while it asks where John Connor is.

Not able to stop the laugh bubbling up inside him, Derek smirks, his head dizzy. He spits at the feet of the monster that took the form of Allie.

"Fuck you," he says thickly.

---

Staring down at his pancakes, Derek's not entirely sure what to do with them. The only thing that Sarah can semi-make is this breakfast food. He stabs at it again with the fork and hits porcelain plate underneath, something completely foreign when compared with the tin bowls that he's used to. They taste fantastic, though, and melt in his mouth, a sensation not experienced since childhood.

The television is on and blaring the news, Sarah's ears perked as she cleans out her guns at the kitchen table. Every afternoon, her habit stays the same. Constantly, her alert eyes tear apart the news headings, as if she's looking for any slight hint that Skynet is on the rage with a new chess-playing device.

Barely fifteen minutes later, John come barreling into the house with the mystery, on-the-loose Terminator by his side. Yesterday, she'd gone missing.

Lately, he's gotten used to it. Not much, granted, but the slightest bit that makes living bearable in a household with a killing machine with the looks of a dead, teenage girl that he fell through one long, dark tunnel for. Sometimes, it gets to the point as to where he can feel his blood boil when she looks at him too long or when John gives her one of those secret, knowing looks, like they're wiring a classified information between them; as if she's special and deserves to be in the same time-line as the future leader of the free world.

Upon hearing the argument between the two of them, the sweet taste of pancakes instantly goes sour as the food plummets to his stomach.

"Cam, I swear, you're not—"

"Yes," she states flatly, "I am."

"You're being ridiculous," John sighs, running his hand through his hair, a bemused expression on his face, his eyes wandering towards Derek.

"It's true."

"No, c'mon. Derek?" The boy turns towards the gristled fighter. "Do you know what's she's talking about?"

Stonily, the older man's gaze shifts to the metal. "What?" he spits.

"John doesn't believe me."

Derek can feel Sarah turn away from the television to lend her two cents to the conversation. He stuffs more pancakes in, not surprised when they stick in his throat. "Oh?" he mumbles, his words garbled.

A body that he'd touched with his own hands, mouth and heart simply stares back at him, that eternally dim-witted expression on her face that wrecks anything that he could've known about her.

"I'm Allison Young," she says monotonously. A pause. "From Palmdale."

Involuntarily, he twitches, dropping his fork. "Excuse me—"

"I'm Alliso—"

"—but what kind of _shit ass_—"

"—from Palmd—"

"_Shut!"_ he yells, loud enough to make John and Sarah step back, "_UP!" _He lunges forward, the small table crashing the floor with an unholy "bang" and madly grabs at one of the guns that Sarah was previously polishing and checking. "You have no fucking _right_ to say her name!"

Everybody is quiet.

Everything is still.

Before an irrational act is done, John Connor steps forward, holding his hand up to Derek. "Cam, lets go," he says simply to the Terminator. "Now."

"But—"

"_Now_."

Fuming, Derek swipes at the fallen table, righting it back to its original position and goes back to his pancakes.

**Fin.**

**A/N: Mmm, odd ending. I like leaving people with questions; I think it's a riot. Well, I'd love to hear what any of you have to say about this as a whole, good or bad, I'm not picky. Hoped you liked it! Or at least was able to bare it. :)**


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